Ne Plus Ultra
by fluggerbutter
Summary: It is the hair that always falls into her blue eyes. It is the length of her lashes, the time it takes her to blink. It is the particular shade of crimson that she blushes. It is her fingers running gently over dented metal, when the pain of the pots and the pants digs into her so deeply that she looks like she might cry. It is her wingbeat: the flutter that defines her.


It is the hair that always falls into her blue eyes. It is the length of her lashes, the time it takes her to blink. It is the particular shade of crimson that she blushes. It is her fingers running gently over dented metal, when the pain of the pots and the pans digs into her so deeply that she looks like she might cry; it is the comforting murmurs she grants to bent silver spoons. It is her singing voice, so soft, so imperceptible unless one catches her at the right time, and is really listening. It is her wingbeat: the flutter that defines her.

It is the glittering dust come loose from her skin, the way it gravitates back towards her, takes her form in a dispersed echo of her silhouette. It is her glow in the sunlight. He is part of that glow, in some way, when the gold spills from his measuring cup and splashes onto her head in the morning, and he feels the barest hint of pride in the contribution.

It is the bangs between her thumb and forefinger, the agitated tug, the thinly-veiled exasperation. It is the green of her dress. It is the pom-poms on her shoes. It is the way she hovers when she stops in mid-flight. It is the twenty bites it takes her to chew a mouthful. It is the glances she steals at Rani's flowing hair when she thinks no one is looking, and he wants desperately to tell her that her ponytail is prettier. It is the scrunch of her nose when someone manages to coerce her into laughter. It is the fact that she is unaware of her own loveliness, or if she is aware, she doesn't think it makes a difference, and he'd love her no matter what she looked like but he is still of the strong opinion that there is no one in the world quite as beautiful.

She is perfect. In his eyes, before he knows her as something more than her mannerisms, there is nothing blemished about her.

But then Prilla arrives. Prilla, with her freckles and curls and her how-do-you-do's; Prilla, who is not good at dustkeeping — and she changes everything. She sends Fairy Haven stumbling into confusion, bewilders the Queen, infuriates Tink, and then when Mother Dove is bleeding and Neverland is dying and panic sweeps over Haven like a forest fire, she is the one to save them all, with nothing but a blink and claps and Clumsy children. She pulls them closer together in that same blink, ties knots between her and everyone she considers a friend, and from then on they are marked, they are signified: the questers, the kind ones, those who dared to tag along. He is an extra in her story, barely noticeable, lingering in the margins, but he is there, and he likes where he is.

She is still a goddess in his eyes.

And then, not long after they think the world has settled, Rani. Sweet, weepy, self-sacrificing Rani, who cut off her wings and _swam _and made a deal with a mermaid that buried them in deeper trouble than they realised, she interrupts while Tink is mending a saucepan he has purposely broken, and the lives of the Never fairies spiral into something that everyone insists is out of their control.

He flies out to sea. It is the most reckless thing he has ever done in his life. He flies out to sea for love and for Tink and nearly drowns, and for the briefest of moments, finds limitless power at his fingertips. He can only wish for one thing, and he is not good enough for that one thing to be unselfish; none of them are good enough, and all of them are taken with a sickness that eats away at their insides. He sees Vidia lose something of herself in her own speed. He watches as Ree is slowly stripped of her dignity. He witnesses Rani turning into a bat as she is enveloped in mermaid song, and he breaks Tink, breaks her so much she doesn't want to be fixed.

Having her curl up beside him and cling to his arm, hearing her say his name with such discernible warmth, it pulls at his heart and all the dust in Neverland could not make him feel more whole. She talks with him. She laughs more. She speaks of all that is dear to her heart and nothing seems to be dearer than him. He steals her love from the puzzles of pots that once consumed her. For too short a time, he is her everything, just as she is his.

He hates himself for it. But if that wish were reversed, and the wand found its way back to his hands, he'd make the same one all over again, and live in self-loathing if it meant he had her.

Irreversible damage arises. When she has delved into the glimmering dreams of the metal and awoken the wand, stroked the thin strip of silver into love and goodness and compassion just like he knew she would be able to, when the chaos has settled, and she remembers him, her feelings have shifted for the obvious reasons. Her adoration dissolves into anger, her infatuation to disbelief.

She stands with her pretty, open palm quarter inches from his face and no one dares stop her — her glow is cherry red and trembling, even Mother Dove does not coo — but then she bites her lip and drops her hand and somehow that hurts him far more than a beating. His punishment for a while is a wary gaze and the silent treatment, but then she realises that such exclusion reveals too much emotion for the solemn, stoic Tinker Bell, and pretends nothing ever happened, pretends life is what it used to be.

And from then on he sees the pain in her eyes, the aching heart beneath. She has been hiding behind her impatience and resentment but now she has allowed him some window for his viewing, whether she knows it or not, and he knows now how her veins throb in ceaseless agony, how her blood runs polluted by trust she has lost.

The blame does not fall on his shoulders alone. He discovers that before his laugh arrived, her love for Peter Pan ran deeper than her love for leaky kettles — then Peter broke her heart, and she refused to love again. But he had to come along and distress her further in his affection and proceeded, in his affection, to twist her into something she was not and could not be. In an act of blatant thievery, he took from her what was most precious, most fragile; the thing she protected so fiercely, he stole. She was left partly destroyed, as she had been when Peter left her for a thimble from a Clumsy girl: but therein lies the difference, for to tempt a broken heart of your own choosing, that is life. That is love.

But he did not give her a choice.


End file.
